DEATH BY L IGHTNING. 335 
On June 30, 1788, a soldier in the neighborhood of 
Mannheim, being overtaken by rain, placed himself under 
a tree, beneath which a woman had previously taken shel- 
ter. He looked upward to see whether the branches were 
thick enough to afford the required protection, and, in 
doing so, was struck by lightning, and fell senseless to the 
earth. The woman at his side experienced the shock in 
her foot, but was not struck down. Some hours afterward 
the man revived, but remembered nothing about what had 
occurred, save the fact of his looking up at the branches. 
This was his last act of consciousness, and he passed from 
the conscious to the unconscious condition without pain. 
The visible marks of a lightning stroke are usually insig- 
nificant: the hair is sometimes burned; slight wounds are 
observed; while, in some instances, a red streak marks the 
track of the discharge over the skin. 
Under ordinary circumstances, the discharge from a 
small Leyden jar is'exceedingly unpleasant to me. Some 
time ago I happened to stand in the presence of a numerous 
audience, with a battery of fifteen large Leyden jars charged 
beside me. Through some awkwardness on my part, I 
touched a wire leading from the battery, and the discharge 
went through my body. Life was absolutely blotted out 
for a very sensible interval, without a trace of pain. In a 
second or so consciousness returned; I vaguely discerned 
the audience and apparatus, and, by the help of these ex- 
ternal appearances, immediately concluded that I had re- 
ceived the battery discharge. The intellectual conscious- 
ness of my position was restored with exceeding rapidity, 
but not so the optical consciousness. To prevent the audi- 
ence from being alarmed, I observed that it had often been 
my desire to receive accidentally such a shock, and that my 
wish had at length been fulfilled. But, while making this 
remark, the appearance which my body presented to my 
eyes was that of a number of separate pieces. The arms, 
for example, were detached from the trunk, and seemed 
suspended in the air. In fact, memory and the power of 
reasoning appeared to be complete long before the optic 
nerve was restored to healthy action. But what I wish 
chiefly to dwell upon here is, the absolute painlessness of 
the shock; and there cannot, I think, be a doubt that, to a 
person struck dead by lightning, the passage from life to 
death occurs without consciousness being in the least 
